


2009 Red Is My Colour Challenges

by songspinner9



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 13:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songspinner9/pseuds/songspinner9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers: "Lost Souls" (radio), Doctor Who Season 3</p><p>Disclaimer: Doctor Who and Torchwood belong to the BBC.</p><p>Summary: Back in 2009, I set myself a challenge to write at for at least 3 of the one a day challenges, and made it to 5.  This first one is set as the team goes home from CERN in Switzerland from the radio episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of Her Wings

_Prompt:  
Listen. The minstrels sing,  
In the departed villages. The nightingale,  
Dust in the buried wood, flies on the grains of her wings  
And spells on the winds of the dead his winter's tale._

_Excerpt from "A Winter's Tale".  
by Dylan Thomas_

***

Jack's mind was still on alert mode, even once they were on the plane. He hadn't slept that day, not even when they stayed overnight in the hotel rooms Martha had demanded that UNIT arrange. The humming of the airplane's engines was calming, but the Captain hated flying when he wasn't the pilot, and a small part of his mind was wishing he was at the controls. Gwen slept, curled up on the seat, Ianto was asleep on Jack's shoulder, but Martha...

"I can hear you thinking from here..." Jack called out softly, trying not wake his teammates or startle the friend he'd been observing.

Startling anyway, Martha uncoiled from her seat with reflexes that seemed to be hypersensitive still. "Sorry." She spoke dryly, one weary eyebrow up. "I'm not sure if it's possible to think quietly."

"Nah. Don't apologize." He shifted a bit, easing Ianto down onto his lap so that he could turn and face her. "I'm glad", he added, "that your friend Julia, is going to be okay. Are you all right?"

She managed a tired smile. "I hadn't expected all this...well, this, when I called you. And I'm glad Ianto and Gwen are all right." The smile widened as Jack's hand stroked over the younger man's shoulder and pulled a blanket up a bit higher.

"So am I, nightingale."

Her head cocked to one side and she regarded him curiously. "Jack?"

"Hmmmm?"

"Why do you call me that?"

"Nightingale?"

"You've done that since after we first...since we traveled together with the Doctor."

"End of the world survivor's club."

"Yeah. Figured it had something to do with...I was just wondering."

Jack leaned back against the cushioned airplane seat with a sigh and shook his head. "I guess it's two things. You're a healer, first of all."

"Oh don't tell me you met Florence Nightingale, then?"

He laughed quietly at her exasperated expression. "Well I did, actually, and she had that same intensity that you did. And no, we did not have any sort of relationship other than brief acquaintances, so don't even think of asking."

"Oh, poor Jack. Turned you down?" Martha snickered.

"Didn't even try asking, actually. She was sort of focused." Jack let his memory wander back for just a moment. "Beautiful, though, in that focus. Sort of like some other people I know, you included." He soothed Ianto as the younger man murmured something in his sleep and fell quiet again at his touch.

"And the other reason?"

Jack looked across the cabin at her. "Nightingales have this beautiful voice, and I remember reading this story once about one. Her song saved an emperor and an empire...a huge and glorious voice for a tiny bird. She saved his life and then she told him the truth for the rest of that life."

Her huge eyes, liquid with sudden and unshed tears, met his gaze. "Jack..."

"You sang the truth to the world, Martha, and I wish everyone could know. I told the others some things about that year, when I got back to Cardiff. Ianto knows some of your part in it"

"Ah." She said in a roughened voice. "That explains why he was so formal when we first met. Like I was a UNIT general or something."

Jack chuckled affectionately. "Always protocol with this one. He's so much better at it than I am."

Curling up again against her own cushions, his friend tucked a hand under her chin, dark eyes still tracking him. "Jack, will you sing something for me? I remember your voice from back then. When it was all over, you sang me to sleep once, on the Tardis when we were all still healing."

So for a little while, Jack's own voice soared as the plane flew, a lullaby for his nightingale until she slept.


	2. A Horticultural Truce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own them, the BBC does. Darn it.
> 
> Set during in season 2, around the holiday season.
> 
> Summary: Sometimes, esoteric knowledge and mistletoe can help when you’re trying to prevent violence…written for Day 22

“For the last time, Owen, NO!”

Jack’s voice echoed through the Hub, and Ianto winced as Myfanwy cried out in alarm again.

“Come off it, Jack. You’d do the same, and you know it.”

“Ahem.” Ianto cleared his throat loudly enough to cut through the continuing argument, and pointed to the top of the doorway in which they were standing toe to toe.

“Oh, for…”

“You can’t seriously…”

“No,” Ianto interrupted the two men’s spluttering. “I do not seriously expect any sort of kissing. Please, believe me when I say that, sir. I am not responsible for putting that up…that was Gwen. But the tradition comes from a much older one. If two enemies met under mistletoe, they were to agree to a truce to last until the next day. I am rather aware that the Hub is not a Scandinavian forest, but it seems appropriate.”

There was a sullen silence that made Ianto roll his eyes and seriously consider getting the dinosaur involved. The silence lasted long enough that he drew in a breath to point out this idea out loud, but then Jack relaxed his fists and leaned back against Toshiko’s desk.

“I suppose we could set up a containment area in one of the rooms downstairs,”

Torchwood’s doctor glared for a moment longer and then finally shook his head in total exasperation. “Great. That’s all I needed. I promise not to blow up the Hub.”

“Again.” Ianto pointed out helpfully, and ducked in time to miss the small tray Owen threw at him.

“Once, tea-boy, just once! And it was only one room, remember?”

At that point, Jack started snickering, and Owen lasted all of another half a minute before he cracked up.

“I’ll just go figure out the specs for the containment, then, shall I?”

“Right. You do that.” Jack waved a hand in deliberately rude, if affectionate dismissal.

As his teammate went off in the direction of the autopsy bay, muttering to himself, Ianto turned to his smirking boss.

“Are you two quite done?” He found himself, rather unsurprisingly, enclosed in a strong embrace. “With the arguing, that is.”

“Yup.” Jack grinned at him. “Thank you for helping. I think that deserves a demonstration of the more modern tradition of mistletoe in wintertime. Drove the Victorians to distraction, you know. All that public affection, using that little plant as an excuse.”

“And you need an excuse, sir?”

Any answer to that bit of calm sarcasm was postponed by Jack’s enthusiastic demonstration.


	3. Hibernating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The Torchwood boys and their world belong to the BBC. Darn it.
> 
> Spoilers: none, set sometime in season 2
> 
> Summary: An excursion to pick up Rift wrack brings an unusual glimpse of something. A late entry for challenge 13.

_Prompt:  
Perhaps you will see an early pair of Jackdaws collecting twigs for their nest as the other creatures of the countryside like frogs, toads and hedgehogs lie asleep, waiting for warmer times.  
-from “Winter Break in Wales”_

 

***

“Jack, did you get it?”

“Yeah, it was wedged behind a couple of rocks. Go on back, I’ll meet you at the campsite. Think I’ll take the dry way around…”

“Good idea, sir.” As Jack began picking his way around the larger boulders, Ianto made his own way back to where they’d pitched the tent. Now that the artifact spit through the Rift last week had finally been located, they could secure it and head back to Cardiff in the morning.

It took a while for Jack to get back to where they’d set up camp. And when he did, he dropped down by the fire immediately, holding out his hands to warm them.

“What happened to your gloves?” Ianto inquired, one eyebrow up.

“They’re in my pocket, mom.”

“Ha. Why on earth would you take them off in this weather?”

Jack held out his hand for the thermos-cup of hot coffee Ianto was offering. “That thing that we found, it needed contact with skin to start up.”

“I take it that it’s familiar to you, then, sir?”

“Yup. It’s a sort of scanner. It will be used by scientists for quite some time in the future, actually. Wanna see?” There was a particularly gleeful expression on Jack’s tired face that made Ianto instantly want to do whatever it would take to keep it there.

“Is this going to involve waiting to get into our lovely, warm tent?” Ianto asked, with a sigh that was only a little insincere.

“Only a minute or two…hang on…” The Captain pulled out the little device they’d found and tossed it into the air, where it hung, humming to itself. After a moment or two, it made a sort of chirping sound and a golden light shot out in a soft beam.

“Uh, Jack, why is it highlighting a pile of dead leaves?”

“Something under it, if I remember how this works.” Jack cautiously made his way across the little clearing and peered down at where the light had focused. “Oh, that’s what it found! Ianto, come and see.”

Drawn in despite himself, both due to his own curiosity and the other man’s rather childlike wonder, Ianto crossed the open space to join Jack. “Oh…” The end of the light beam culminated in a tiny holographic screen that gave an almost x-ray peek behind the leaves. A tiny hedgehog was revealed, lying asleep in a curled up ball. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those actually hibernating. They turned up in my garden in spring and summer when I was a kid, though.”

They’d knelt to look more closely, then, and Ianto rested his chin on Jack’s shoulder as they watched the tiny mammal breathe and squirm a bit as if it knew they were watching even in its sleep.

“Hibernating,” he said quietly, “in a nice warm place, sounds like a marvelous idea on a night like this. Some days, in fact.” He let his breath out slowly and visibly in the cold air. “Come on. Tent. One sleeping bag."

Jack laughed into Ianto’s hair. “Just until morning. The other might get concerned if we didn’t get up until spring.”


	4. Comforting Sound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: The boys and their world belong to the BBC, of course.
> 
> Spoilers: vague ones for "Exit Wounds" and "The Last of the Timelords"
> 
> Summary: A quiet conversation about accents and sounds as a storm passes by...

_Prompt:  
Vivaldi's Four Seasons  
"Winter"_

 _Largo  
Before the fire to pass peaceful,  
Contented days while the rain outside pours down._

***

With a sigh of relief, Ianto typed in the detail into the schedule and shut down his laptop. Rain tapped against a window as the wind blew it sideways, and made it seem all the most lovely that they were inside. That was once difference, he mused, between sleeping at the Hub and the flat...they couldn't hear rain underground, and he'd missed it. Somehow, it didn't matter particularly that it wasn't quite night yet, and Jack had insisted on starting a fire in Ianto's fireplace before they even considered dinner. It was, after all, a rare afternoon when the Rift let them spend a quiet hour or three.

"The call is set for tomorrow morning. The UNIT general, according to Martha, refers to me as "the Welshman" and to you as "that damned American at Torchwood 3." He handed Jack the file, settling down on the floor next to the other man.

Jack tried to look offended as he put the file out of the way on a low table, but grinned instead. "Well, you probably were more polite to him on the phone in the weeks I was gone than I'd ever been. We...don't precisely see eye to eye on most things, the General and I. I'm sure he calls me worse things that 'that damned American'..." He held out his hands to the warmth of the flames in Ianto's fireplace, letting tense muscles slowly relax.

"Your accent. It's not actually contemporary American, is it?" Ianto propped himself up on one elbow with a look brimming with curiosity. It wasn't often that he asked Jack questions like that one, and he was always honestly interested in the answers.

"Nope. It's how I learned the language. Sound shift, I suppose." He rested his chin on steepled fingers, something Ianto had noticed him do before when he was trying to explain something related to his own history. "Right now, in your time, Elizabethan English has its last remnants in the Appalachian Mountains in America. Sounds come around again, or stay hidden and then pop back. I suppose that set was due for a repeat when the colony was going at Boeshane."

"So somewhere, far in the future, on a far away planet, there's a place where everyone speaks some future version of English with Welsh-sounding accents, then?"

"Now that I think about it," Jack mused with a smile, "yeah. There is. A really sweet little province on a rather busy planet, if I remember correctly. Not truly English, but bits of it survive, and with a distinctly Welsh set of vowels."

"There's something comforting about knowing that. Well, then, you'll have to go there in a few thousand years and remember me, and Gwen and Rhys." Ianto tugged at the blanket around Jack's shoulders until it was around his own as well. They sat in comfortable silence, letting the combined heat of their bodies warm the air under the knitted wool and the sounds of the passing storm fade with the daylight.


	5. Come the Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers: 2.13 - "Exit Wounds"
> 
> 200 words written for day 17 of redismycolour...Gwen asked for my attention in this one, which is odd for me, but the boys are there to help.
> 
> Disclaimer: The team and their world belong to the BBC. Really.

The emergency sirens were down to perhaps two or three an hour now. Gwen found herself trudging back across the Plas to the Hub around five in the morning, Andy having finally overrode her orders to send her home. For some reason, she let him and then she called Rhys to come and pick her up. He was on his way home as well, and said he'd get her once she'd checked with with the others.

Wind's picked up a fair amount now...it'll be dawn soon. A rough, buzzing noise interrupted her exhausted attempts at thought... she glanced up in time to see the streetlights finally go on around the Plas after two days, snowflakes glowing on their way to the ash-covered ground. I want both of them to be here to see this...and it's one of thousands of times I'll be thinking that.

Hushed footsteps sounded to her right, the measured steps as familiar to her as their faces. As Ianto's gloved hand tucked her cold fingers against his coat and Jack's fingers twined with hers on her other side, she waited for Rhys. The three of them stood silently watching the return of light to their city.


End file.
